Phobia’s can be genetic and the US had a serial killer that dressed as a clown in the 70s
Are you arguing that a serial killer was so scary he literally changed the genome of Americans?
A fear of clowns is more a cultural thing, inherited thorough culture. A person who was deathly afraid of clows and gave up a child for adoption to Japan (although in Japan like 99% of adoptions are of adults iirc, look it up lol), it might inherit a tendency to manifest a phobia of some sort, but it wouldn’t magically manifest a fear of clows just because their mom was terrified by the serial killer.
I won’t die on this hill, but I do think it’s very possible. Gacey and all the media surrounding him, combined with all the horror media with killer clowns would absolutely have given some people phobias. If phobias are genetic, it makes sense America has a higher population of people that are afraid of clowns
A tendency to have phobias may be genetic, and a fear of snakes and spiders has been found to be “genetic” insofar that you recognise a photo of a snake faster than a stick of grass, even when the photos are made to visually otherwise match. Same with spiders.
Alcoholism is genetic as well, but if you’re family has none, you won’t magically make the gene for addiction appear by becoming an alcoholist. It either is there or it isn’t.
If your whole genome changed based on what you did over a few decades evolution would be much faster and life on this planet extremely curious.
Maybe I don’t fully understand [this](Can the legacy of trauma be passed down the generations? https://share.google/71zM8Ql9nM7Wl7i7f), but it seems like personal trauma absolutely gets passed to offspring. If that is the case, why couldn’t a fear of clowns be developed?
I’ll try to find it when I’m off work, but this is a different one saying something similar Your Childhood Experiences Can Permanently Change Your DNA https://share.google/FDPy5Bu1TGX1Hzwdk
I see what you mean, but that doesn’t say your genome changes. It talks about epigenetic changes, which means changes to gene expression, but not the genes which you have.
We know that a single generation can affect epigenetic changes and this was pretty well observed during the rationing of WWII and other famines. The next generation from people who sufferer from famine are much more likely to develop diabetes and obesity if they’re allowed a normal western diet with fast foods, because their moms being super hungry led to epigenetic changes which made the children express more genes that help during times of famine, but then those kids didn’t end up having to suffer famine.
The point being that those genes are already there.
At most you could argue that theres some epigenetic changes which would affect the expression of the genes related to phobias, but again, the specific fear of a clown would not be relayed in any way.
The only specific visual phobias we have that are somehow “coded” into the genes are spiders and snakes. And those come from millions of years before we were even hominins.
A single generation does not code genes into being able to be afraid of something as specific as clowns. Or any phobia, for that matter. It may help express latent genes for phobias which might then result in clown phobias, but that’s it.
Phobia’s can be genetic and the US had a serial killer that dressed as a clown in the 70s
Are you arguing that a serial killer was so scary he literally changed the genome of Americans?
A fear of clowns is more a cultural thing, inherited thorough culture. A person who was deathly afraid of clows and gave up a child for adoption to Japan (although in Japan like 99% of adoptions are of adults iirc, look it up lol), it might inherit a tendency to manifest a phobia of some sort, but it wouldn’t magically manifest a fear of clows just because their mom was terrified by the serial killer.
I won’t die on this hill, but I do think it’s very possible. Gacey and all the media surrounding him, combined with all the horror media with killer clowns would absolutely have given some people phobias. If phobias are genetic, it makes sense America has a higher population of people that are afraid of clowns
You’re conflating a lot of concepts there, buddy.
A tendency to have phobias may be genetic, and a fear of snakes and spiders has been found to be “genetic” insofar that you recognise a photo of a snake faster than a stick of grass, even when the photos are made to visually otherwise match. Same with spiders.
Alcoholism is genetic as well, but if you’re family has none, you won’t magically make the gene for addiction appear by becoming an alcoholist. It either is there or it isn’t.
If your whole genome changed based on what you did over a few decades evolution would be much faster and life on this planet extremely curious.
Maybe I don’t fully understand [this](Can the legacy of trauma be passed down the generations? https://share.google/71zM8Ql9nM7Wl7i7f), but it seems like personal trauma absolutely gets passed to offspring. If that is the case, why couldn’t a fear of clowns be developed?
Well, first off, there are things such as epigenetic changes, but that aside, the link does not open. Give me the proper one and I can check it out
I’ll try to find it when I’m off work, but this is a different one saying something similar Your Childhood Experiences Can Permanently Change Your DNA https://share.google/FDPy5Bu1TGX1Hzwdk
Edit: I found the original link, just had to edit the other comment and copy it from there https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenetics
I see what you mean, but that doesn’t say your genome changes. It talks about epigenetic changes, which means changes to gene expression, but not the genes which you have.
We know that a single generation can affect epigenetic changes and this was pretty well observed during the rationing of WWII and other famines. The next generation from people who sufferer from famine are much more likely to develop diabetes and obesity if they’re allowed a normal western diet with fast foods, because their moms being super hungry led to epigenetic changes which made the children express more genes that help during times of famine, but then those kids didn’t end up having to suffer famine.
The point being that those genes are already there.
At most you could argue that theres some epigenetic changes which would affect the expression of the genes related to phobias, but again, the specific fear of a clown would not be relayed in any way.
The only specific visual phobias we have that are somehow “coded” into the genes are spiders and snakes. And those come from millions of years before we were even hominins.
A single generation does not code genes into being able to be afraid of something as specific as clowns. Or any phobia, for that matter. It may help express latent genes for phobias which might then result in clown phobias, but that’s it.